Hi there
This is the second call for papers for the Density Inside Out conference.
The deadline for paper submission is on Friday, 16 March 07.
Please submit your abstract to [log in to unmask]
Kind regards,
is
The conference flyer can be downloaded at:
www.geos.ed.ac.uk/geography/DensityInsideOut.html
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DENSITY INSIDE OUT
6-8 June 2007
Edinburgh UK
SPEAKERS:
Scott Lash, Goldsmiths College London
Jacques Lévy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne
Belinda Yuen, National University of Singapore
Neville Mars, Dynamic City Foundation Beijing
Miles Glendinning, Edinburgh College of Art
To think of the city is always to invoke the question of density. Urban
density has been celebrated, cultivated, worried about, managed, shunned.
For some density is what makes the city full of promise, for others it is
what determines its problems. Derived from the physical science formula for
the ratio of mass to volume of inert materials, in urban applications
density has operated as a seemingly objective measure of the ratio of people
or activity to area. As a diagnostic tool density has been set to work in
fields ranging from the pragmatic science of urban planning, to the arts of
urban design. But the city is no mere inert material. It incorporates
complex and fluid relations between bodies, infrastructures, technologies
and built fabric, such that the matter of how density should be best
measured FAR, FSI, persons/ha, dwellings/ha remains contentious. Indeed, as
Kevin Lynch warned, as long ago as1962, [m]any tricks can be played with
density standards. Density is imbued with powerful figurative, cultural and
ideological associations, connoting everything from the unregulated
hyper-density of Kowloon Walled City, to the bureaucratic agrarian
utopianism of Soviet desuburbism, to the hope of a planet facing
environmental crisis. Indeed, density measures may well be a symptom of the
struggle to comprehend the complexity of lived socio-material relations,
shaped as they are by proximity, mobility, distance, contiguity, congestion,
distinction, camouflage, porosity, intensity.
In her famous urban intervention of 1961, Death and Life of Great American
Cities, Jane Jacobs asked: What are the proper densities for city
dwellings?. A range of urban pathologies - ill-health, anxiety,
indifference, insurgency - had historically been attributed to improper
density ratios, and since the nineteenth century the matter of density
generated scientific investigations and interventions. In Jacobs view the
answer to the question of proper density was not about abstract formulas,
but what she suggestively called performance. Densities are too low, or too
high, she argued, when they frustrate city diversity instead of abetting it.
Right amounts are right amounts because of how they perform. Jacobs sought
to replace scientific abstraction with a magical, but immeasurable,
choreography between body and ground. Writing at almost the same time, Lynch
suggestively extended this thinking, arguing that density conceived of as a
ratio between object and ground was too simplistic. Not least, such
formulations ignored the role of technologies of various kinds that
weaken[ed] the connection of structures to ground.
Density Inside Out conceives of density as a symptomatic material trope. It
is curious about the way density has been put to use, be it as a defensive
measure, a visionary formula, an instrument of governance, or a catalyst for
urban innovation. It hopes to elaborate the ways density is a component of
the city as a performed event. And it encourages investigations that hold
the materialist, figurative and performative dimensions of density in
creative tension. This conference offers an opportunity to re-imagine the
relationship between conceptions of density and how technology,
infrastructure, buildings and bodies are organized on, above, and even
without the ground. Through the conversations that Density Inside Out will
host, we hope to generate more nuanced and supple vocabularies that might
serve new ways of imagining urban futures.
The following are some suggested thematic threads by which we hope to
organize this conversation:
* Metaphorical and ideological fortunes of density
* Density/intensity: de-materialized densities, temporality and intensity
* Affects of density
* Density and performativity
* Configurations of people and things
* Measuring density: The proliferating vocabulary of density (FAR, Plot
Ratio, Persons/Ha, Dwellings/Ha, etc)
* The history of density in urban planning, design and architecture
* Density, disciplinarity and urban governance
* Typologies of density (the cell and existenzminimum, urban blocks,
highrise urbanism, mat cities)
* Technologies of density: Proximities, contiguities, distances
* Density and the sociology of distinction, camouflage and sameness
* Cultures of congestion: incubating innovation
* Crowding, proxemics and territoriality
* Prosthetic, dispersed and networked densities
Papers are invited from those working in geography, architecture, planning,
urban studies, art, sociology or related disciplines. Please submit a title,
name and affiliation, and abstract (300 words) by 16 February 2007 for
consideration to Ignaz Strebel ([log in to unmask]). Registration cost:
£100 (academic), £50 (ft student).
Conference organisers:
Jane M. Jacobs ([log in to unmask]) Geography, University of Edinburgh
Stephen Cairns ([log in to unmask]) Architecture, University of Edinburgh
Ignaz Strebel ([log in to unmask]) Geography, University of Edinburgh
Conference venue:
Architecture, School of Arts Culture & Environment, The University of
Edinburgh, 20 Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JZ, UK.
Conference flyer:
www.geos.ed.ac.uk/geography/DensityInsideOut.html
Dr. Ignaz Strebel
Research Associate
AHRC High-rise Project
Geography / Architecture
University of Edinburgh
Institute of Geography
Drummond Street
Edinburgh EH8 9XP
Tel +44 (0)131 650 2662
Fax +44 (0)131 650 2524
Mobile +44 (0)79 667 04 344
Email [log in to unmask]
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